s to say, quite matter-of-fact and simple
things, but I cannot think of them sensibly for joy of the
certainty that you love me. Of course I knew it all the time, but
I couldn't be at ease until I had heard it from your own lips; and
now I feel almost afraid of my great happiness. How wonderful it
seems! And, like all events that are long expected, how suddenly
it has happened in the end. To think that a month ago--only a
little month--you and I were both in Rome, within a mile of each
other, breathing the same air, enclosed by the same cloud, kissed
by the same sunshine, and yet we didn't know it!

"Soberly, though, I want you to understand that I meant all I said
so savagely about going on with your work, and not letting your
anxiety about my welfare interfere with you. I am really one of
the women who think that a wife should further a man's aims in
life if she can; and if she can't do that, she should stand aside
and not impede him. So go on, dear heart, without fear for me. I
will take care of myself, whatever occurs. Don't let one hour or
one act of your life be troubled by the thought of what would
happen to me if you should fall. Dearest, I am your beloved, but I
am your soldier also, ready and waiting to follow where my captain
calls:

"'Teach me, only teach, Love!
As I ought
I will speak thy speech, Love!
Think thy thought.'

"And if I was not half afraid that you would think it bolder than
is modest in your bride to be, I would go on with the next lines
of my sweet quotation.

"Another thing. You went away without saying you forgive me for
the wicked duplicity I practised upon you. It was very wrong, I
suppose, and yet for my life I cannot get up any real contrition
on the subject. There's always some duplicity in a woman. It is
the badge of every daughter of Eve, and it must come out
somewhere. In my case it came out in loving you to all the lengths
and ends of love, and drawing you on to loving me. I ought to be
ashamed, but I'm not--I'm glad.

"I _did_ love first, and, of course, I knew you from the
beginning, and when you wrote about being in love with some one
else, I knew quite well you meant me. But it was so delicious to
pretend not to know, to come near and then to sheer off again, to
touch and then to fly, to tempt